With "oddly fascinating" I mean games that somehow have caught or stayed in your attention for at least some time, either in the past or now for some unintended or unconventional reason. I don't mean because they're fun or you like the world it creates or in worse cases it manipulates you into spending time on it, but something outside of the game itself. It could be whatever, as long as it's taken your interest.

These are the ones that I keep thinking about occasionally (at least the ones I can come up with at the moment):

Action 52 - It began as the usual "haha what a broken pile of garbage" that it usually gets, but in recent years there's some stuff has come out how the thing was put together in about three months and in that time-frame the effort seems heroic. It also gives a lot of the unused stuff the context of not being able to get it done in the little time they had, rather than a lack of caring.

It's still a garbage fire all the same though.

Traktor Racer 3D - I'm sure no one else here knows this exists, but it's on a 10 PC games disc I have around here somewhere. I'm fairly certain that this was much more a case of "can't be arsed" than either other game.

It's more of a game than Big Rigs Over The Road Racing was, but not by a whole lot. There's five single-lap maps taking 3-5 minutes each, so with a little practice the entire game can be beaten in about 20 minutes. A couple of the races are open enough that you can take huge shortcuts the AI won't. For the rest it's mostly a matter of getting in front as soon as possible and trying not to bump into any of the objects that litter the course, as the physics will just go wreak havoc on you. For some reason it's not uncommon for your vehicle to perform a couple of rolls by itself if you decide to use a ramp.

I suppose that's where my fascination stems from? The game is both remarkably mundane and remarkably broken. I'd still like to know what the devs were thinking when they made the first map.

I'm finding it difficult to explain these. This is taking me much longer than it should.

Mega Man X7 - I'm sure this one is a surprise.

This is the only game in the series that does 3D gameplay, failing quite hard in the process. I do like the setting though. Beyond that, I think there was a bit more ambition than there was ability/time. Some of the decisions that I think resulted from this are interesting at least.

-Splash Warfly's stage has everything exploding for no reason. I suspect they had to stitch together whatever bits they had for lack of time.

-There's a bunch of more minor inconsistencies in other stages, like Sniper Anteator's boss room being in a completely different style to the rest of the stage. Many of the boss rooms seem to have no relation to their levels now that I think about it. A lot of weird stuff seems to happen during loading screens.

-At some point in one of the prerendered cutscene backgrounds they messed up and now Axl's hair comes out of the side of his head.

-The fortress is a mess of different styles, between rooms and cutscenes as well. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it. I still don't know if the final boss is meant to take place in outer space or not.

It's all fascinating to me.

I think in my case it's often because there's a considerable interest in how these things work and operate, and the circumstances they're created in. That is probably not uncommon here considering the overlap of this place and TCRF, but still.
Maybe I'm just fond of looking at dumpster fires in game form?

By the way, don't interpret the intro all that strictly - I'm terrible at explaining what I'm trying to do but I don't want this to just become a "here's some games I like" thread, that's all. Hell, I'm pretty sure Action 52 and Traktor Racer are more or less unlikable.

I've tried to come up with a better theme for the topic, but "oddly fascinating" is a decent one as it is. Or perhaps "trainwrecks", since all of these examples seem to be bad games

Hearing that Action 52 was developed in such a short timeframe does explain an awful lot of its... awfulness. But I don't think it really excuses it; it's just as possible that they set out to just make as much crap as they could in two months to fit, and you could probably improve most of the "games" a lot if you cut the number in half and put the time working on those into making other games less bad.

Originally posted by SpontyI'm not totally convinced that it wasn't some weird internet experiment, cause the whole thing is just so bizarre.

i don't think it wasn't, but at some point there _were_ demos (on the DS, proper!) for the RPG game and i kinda got into the story, even participated in the forums a bit before the moderators (not affiliated to bob) turned super transphobic

Actually, Castle of the Winds might be one for me. Like, you just drag a Windows 3.11 icon around and it gets killed by some other Windows 3.11 icons over and over while you sometimes collect some Windows 3.11 icons.

I don't know why I like this game, because by all rights it is actually terrible:

• Nonsense story with a plotline that makes no sense
• Mediocre graphics at best
• Horrible music and sound
• Frustrating, everything-looks-the-same maze-like dungeons
• Lack of clarity for what does what, and what you need
• Awful game mechanics (it's very easy to get yourself stuck and have to die or even restart)
• Overworld design that boils down to "long maze to pad out the game"

The redeeming features aren't too exciting:
• The story is at least funny sometimes, mostly from its absurdity
• It's basically the inverse of Zelda 2 (top-down Zelda clone but with RPG elements)
• Some of the art is pretty good

It's one of the few games I just decided to play once when discovering a (same as the final) prototype of it in BMF's file collection, and ... shrug. I dunno. It's bad, but it's good?

i KINDA wanna say Zhadnost: The People's Party (3DO) but with how i actually really enjoyed the game for what it genuinely is, i dunno if that applies?

but there was so much effort put into the FMVs like, the actors blend in with the CGI backgrounds really well and the acting/characterizations are so good and the little bits of cold war-era movies spliced in and and

i spent some 3 hours yesterday in russian websites trying to work out 3DO ripping tools to dump the FMV out of the game with no luck

i think that's being fascinated by the game outside the game itself, yeah?

Oddly fascinating games are frequently my favorite kind of games. Here are a few that come to mind:

Cube & Star: An Arbitrary Love - This is a slightly pretentious and mostly aimless "games as art" style game. You're a cube rolling around a world painting it different colors as you go along and looking at all the different effects you cause. There are way too many collectibles, NPCs with some strange dialogue, and pages of text with a simple cipher you have to crack to read them. It seems like it wouldn't be a lot of fun, but something about it appeals to me.

E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy - This is a really bizarre and poorly translated FPS RPG with a really strange cyberpunk/WH40K aesthetic and a mostly incomprehensible story. I wouldn't say it's a good game, but I adored it and had a lot of fun with it.

Marathon - This and its two sequels are fairly standard Doom-era FPSs. What makes it interesting to me is the cryptic and expansive story told through various terminals found throughout the games, which was my primary inspiration in writing for a long time. You can skip playing the games and read it all here, if you're interested.

Strawberry Cubes - This is an aimless exploration game with a dark and somewhat glitchy aesthetic. The less said, the better.